* E-mail can be a competitive advantage in healthcare industry
A technology provides a competitive advantage only when one company has the technology and its competitor does not. In the early days of e-mail, there was a competitive advantage in being able to communicate with customers and partners via e-mail when the competition had not yet caught on to the advantages of the technology. However, the ubiquity of e-mail has eliminated it as a competitive advantage in almost every industry – except healthcare.
Because of concerns over sending highly sensitive information electronically – particularly with the advent of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) – and because the medical community is typically not the first to adopt leading-edge technologies, doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers have been slow to adopt e-mail. However, Siemens Medical Solutions last week announced an easy-to-use, secure messaging system for healthcare.
Based on Sigaba’s security technology, the system allows users to easily encrypt e-mail and instant messages and deliver them to partners, patients and others over the Internet or other open networks. The system also allows the creation of policies governing the transmission of electronic communications – for example, if an e-mail message contains a Social Security number, the system will alert the sender that the e-mail should be encrypted.
Siemens is providing its system via an application service provider model and is also selling the software for in-house deployment. The first customer for the Siemens/Sigaba system is Alegent Health, a health network that serves customers in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa.
The advantage of such a system is obvious: Information can be sent much more quickly electronically than sending paper files, films and other materials via courier or the mail. In addition, this capability gives healthcare providers a clear competitive advantage over other providers that continue to use traditional methods, since only about one-quarter of physicians currently use e-mail to communicate with patients and organizations with whom they deal professionally. Siemens’ research has found that one-third of patients would consider switching doctors if they could communicate with their doctor electronically.
Osterman Research will be conducting a short survey among users to determine their attitudes toward switching healthcare and other service providers as a result of their use of technology. If you’d like to participate in – and receive the results from – this very short survey, please drop me a line at mailto:michael@ostermanresearch.com
